Christine, since you're a professional member, why don't you ask your question again in the Editing topic, and perhaps give us a sense of what you have, so we can tell you if we agree that something is missing.

Hey Everyone,
I'm a video journalist and doc filmmaker who loves this line of work more than anything. I want to tell you all about this new media company I'm starting to empower VJ's and documentary filmmakers around the world. What we do is connect video journalists, doc filmmakers, and multimedia storytellers to the world's top digital publishers. Our mission is to help tell the world's most important, untold stories. Please check out www.storyhunter.tv for more information.
Thanks,
Jaron

I'm happy to share the news that my film, High Plains Doctor: Healing on the Tibetan Plateau, will be screening on CBC documentary channel next Monday (May 7th). I hope those of you in Canada will be able to check it out. I'm going to start sending it to international festivals and I look forward to meeting some of you along the way. Here's the link:

hello, I'm a filmmaker from Barcelona working on handmade films. I like very much to film by myself and edit, but also to be involved in projects with other people. My prefered style of filming is close to a more photographic or "cinematographic" one. I can also offer long experience on documentaries done for public TV and also as a freelance.
https://vimeo.com/channels/juangamerowww.paradocs.es

Finding Mabel is a gripping documentary that follows a young woman's journey to Argentina, to piece together the enigmatic disappearance of the woman she was named after, one of the 30,000 people who disappeared during Argentina's last military dictatorship. Part scavenger hunt, part self-discovery, Finding Mabel intelligently weaves Argentina's recent dark past with today's polarizing struggle for justice.

Filming begins Monday, May 7th in Argentina. The director is launching a crowd-funding campaign to raise funds to complete the film. Please use the below link to access additional information as well as to donate.

Hello D-Word and all,
I just came across this site and realized all the fun and I had been missing! Glad to be here and hope to see and shear of some great Documentaries. I'm still in school at this moment but hope to become a Documentary Filmmaker someday. Hope everyone had a good weekend!

I'm Raymund Cruz from the Philippines, a country that has over 150 different languages (from indigenous to foreign types). Speaking of languages, I am glad to be part of the d-word community. Despite the variety of artist speaking different dialects, this website has enabled us to all communicate through what we all love, and that is DOCUMENTARY.

Well for me, I am a filmmaker in my free time. It is an intense hobby, since in it was my full time occupation during my previous career. Now starting over, I currently work in a Design and Construction firm in charge of renovating Casinos and Hotels. It's difficult to support a future family as well while stubbornly struggling to create works that is for personal reasons. However eventually, me and my wife plan to do such attempts abroad.

As for experience in films, I had held different parts of production in narratives, television shows, and documentaries. This ranged from directing, producing, screenwriting, editing, production design, and cinematography. My real interest however is the documentary genre. So I plan to actively pursue it, for it has the most powerful effect on people and the ability to reform them.

As a team, me and my wife are about to launch a production company as our stress reliever from the real world. Here, we will create short films, documentaries, and theater performances that are used to express ourselves through different subjects. Some plans are in the works, while the more ambitious projects will need to wait. One of the plans is to create a drama therapy for various people.

So there goes a long introduction. Hope to collaborate and learn from this useful website.

Hello all!
I'm based in the UK and work as an artist and film-maker mainly on self-directed projects, occasionally also creating short website films for the art organisation Grizedale Arts, based in rural Cumbria (England). With my company Somewhere, I work in close collaboration with my co-producer and co-director Nina Pope, based in our London studio. Our feature docs include: â€˜Jaywick Escapesâ€™ (2012) which premieres this summer, 'Living with the Tudors' (2007) and 'Bata-ville: We are not afraid of the future' (2005).
Our work can be seen in more detail on www.somewhere.org.ukI'm currently working on a barge cinema project The Floating Cinema and on a film about my family.
Cheerio for now!
KG

My name is Kathleen Erdelyi and I'm a current student at East Stroudsburg University in Pennsylvania. I'm currently in my junior year and I'm pursuing a major in Media Communication Technology with a concentration in video production. After graduation, i plan to get a job with a documentary company. I love telling a story, and I would love to be apart of something that could change someone's life. I have so many questions to people who are currently involved in documentaries, and I was wondering if anyone would like to answer a few questions for me. It would really help provide some insight for me into this career.

Thank you!

How did you work your way up to your position?
Did you have to endure a lot of "slave labor" to get to where you are today?
Do you feel your schooling providing you with a sufficient background in your field, or did you learn more through experience?
How reliable is this field?
Is there room for growth?
How do you feel is the best way to effectively intern?
How would you compare working for a small company vs a large corporation?
Is your job exciting?
Do you look forward to going to work every morning?
Do you work in a team, or are you mostly isolated?
How did you get involved in this field?

Hey All!
My Name is Florian. I am an independent environmental filmmaker, the founder of Berlin based AugeFilms. My current project is "Saving Papua by not cycling there". Last year I started on my bicycle from Germany with the plan to cycle all the way to Papua, Indonesia, in order to bring awareness to the spread of deforestation in Indonesia to the Papuan archipelago.
Due to border crossing regulation between India and Burma I could only cycle up to India. I now had to abandon my bicycle in India and am on my way back home on surface again. The film is going to be a colorful, thrilling roadmovie full of conflict and resolution, obstacles, commitment, lessons to be learnt about life, not giving up, realizations such as "Papua is everywhere" and "There is always a Plan Z".
This project is a follow-up to a documentary about deforestation in Indonesia that I made in 2011 called "Cari Hutan – In Search of Forest" – according to several NGOs in Indonesia, it is the most thrilling, informative, yet amusing documentary/roadmovie ever made about the subject of deforestation in Indonesia. I would like to encourage all of you to have a look at it and spread the awareness about this defining issue of our times. -> www.augefilms.blog.com/cari-hutan/All this and much more can be found on www.augefilms.blog.comI could definitely need some support at the moment – spreading the word and considering a micro-donation would be awesome!
Best wishes from Hong Kong!
Love,
Florian

Welcome, Kathleen and Florian. Kathleen, I think you'd be better served by asking your questions in the Mentoring Room topic and by only asking one or two questions at a time. Posting such a long list of them is way too time consuming for anyone to want to answer.

Just joined this community today and am part way though my first documentary (planned finished date this September). I am working on a documentary about the education system (with the help of about 12 others), its problems and how science is not being applied to it. I look forward to learning as much as I can from fellow enthusiasts and professionals.

That's interesting. I often feel that there is a need to challenge education, for it's methods and contents are what will shape the future of our children.

One note though: I hope that the group does not focus on all its problems. Sometimes as documentary filmmakers, we need to be more diplomatic. Truth is always the main characteristic of our works. So just show the picture of what is happening, focus on a singular topic that embodies the points you want to raise, and trust that the idea of change will grow from there.

Just my two cents. I know the documentary will be great.

A friend of mine, Monster Jimenez, made a brilliant doc about "sick" books that are used in public school around our country. If you want, you can get in touch with her here

We plan on making the movie much more solutions based them problems based. Our target audience already agrees that there is a problem in the system the trick is showing a innovative solution. We are also trying to keep it to around 30 mins so we will only have about 10mins for problems.

I just remember a very useful advice from my mentor. This was given to me when I was first pursuing documentaries. He told me: "For you to grab the audience's heart, you must simplify and be precise. LESS IS MORE. Chose a singular topic, squeeze it out, and the truth will come out."

Howdy Y'all! I just joined the community and have been feverishly reading posts for the last two days trying to gain a little insight into the business plan of the Doc I am currently working out and keep finding myself extremely distracted following threads that are completely unrelated but totally necessary for my brain to munch on!
With my recent move to Austin with my Partner Taylor and our newest devotion to the world of documentary I can not tell you how excited I was to stumble upon this community.
I just moved from Los Angeles and as much as I loved the smog rolling into to a morning hike in runyon canyon, Texas is a legitimate breath of fresh air. My Partner and I are are up on a ranch in the northern part of the state editing, writing, and preproducing the Documentary we have been working on for the last year before head back down to Austin. We shot in China, Japan, Fiji, Tahiti, and the Philippines and we still have about 4 more places to visit and a whole lot more underwater footage to get, so we are climbing the fundraising hill right now. Our documentary is the story behind Natures only living Gem, the Cultured Pearl, the Farmers and Divers who work to produce it and the environmental battles they must face, so funding has been a bit of a challenge. If any of you have the opportunity check out our trailer www.powerofpearlmovie.com I would love love love feedback, thoughts, or any ideas for collaboration.
Thanks Very much and really look Forward to meeting you all!!
Ahbra

Great that you discovered us Ahbra and a very warm welcome. Best of luck with your film. Not that we normally encourage double posting but you might want to post your trailer in the Works In Progress topic if you're looking for feedback. This is pretty much just for introductions.